Voltage Regulator in a Mint Tin

One day every geek finishes something every other geek finished too: Hack a Mint Tin.

Here is a voltage regulator that is hacked into a Mint Tin. In goes 12V, out comes 12V and 5V.

The electronics with the used components and theory behind is described here. One difference is that this application here has no capacitors.

This Something Else applies this theory and puts it into practice.

The Making

After I emptied this little mint tin it landed in the tinker box of my boys. Since then it has been used for several things the kids needed it for: it was a boat, a wheel, a puck,a wallet and something two boys can throw against each other.

Now this tin got hacked from me and transformed into something else.

The components got layed out to find out how they match into the tin.

For the VIN and outs for GND, 12V and 5V some holes had to be cut out.

So that the components fit.

Then the GND, 12V and 6V with the voltage regulator got wired and soldered. Theheat-sink of the voltage regulator touches the base of the tin and has contact so thatheat can conduct into it.

After all got wired the smoke-test was successful.

So the shrinktubes got heated up and finalized the making. Putting all into thislittle mint tin needed some time to figure out. Especially the fuse is quite bulkyfor this application...

You are right that a powersupply like this can be used all over in our projects.Yours is a lot more tiny then mine and has also 3.3V. Even more usages possible. Very neat make, G.

Regarding the LiPos and the usage of this mint tin voltage regulator I could not skip the fuse.It's bypassed now (the red cable in the fuse holder)... but as soon as I play with the LiPos this bypass gets replaced by a regular fuse.

I was also thinking about a On-indicator LED. But the issue with the LED I had was that I didnot want to have a powersupply that might be counter productive for a future use. The LED shallbe with the application that uses this voltage regulator - not with this mint tin.